Safaa Khatib

The Braids Rebellion, 2018Scan photography, audio 7’

The Braids Rebellion is a research trip that has been artistically recreated of 25 original scenes of Palestinian girls – all under the age of 18 – who were arrested and imprisoned during 2015 and 2016. These scenes were originally encountered as real news items that appeared in our daily scrolling – which we no longer care about.

The project demonstrates the concept of “life as origin”. The work is based on an event in February 2017 when prisoners in Hasharon prison cut off their braids after hearing an announcement on a local radio station urging people to donate their hair for cancer patients. Focusing on the prisoners’ refusal of any expression of sympathy towards them and their insistence on not being isolated from the act of resistance through reinforcing the continuity of life inside the occupation’s prison cells, the girls again use their bodies as a tool of resistance through this revolutionary act represented by cutting off their braids and smuggling them outside the prison so that others may live.

Safaa Khatib lives and works in Jerusalem and the Galilee village of Kfar Kanna. She has a Bachelor of Arts in photography from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem (2016), and is currently completing her Master's degree in cinema studies from the University of Haifa. In 2016, Safaa participated in an artist’s residency at La Cité Internationale des arts in Paris. She has exhibited her Baghdad Studio project six times in 2016-2017: at Henri Frick Square, Saint Joss ten-Noode in Brussels; L'Uzine in Casablanca; Padeco Gallery in Ramallah; the French Institute in Nablus; Fattoush Gallery in Haifa; and Jeune Création Gallery in Paris. In 2016, she exhibited Palestine World Cup 2034 at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and her Dome of the Rock video installation at the Bezalel Gallery, Jerusalem. Safaa is the 2016 winner of the Palestine In & Out Festival in Paris – Photography Category and recipient of the 2018.